Rocktropolis is the first game created by RIT's Game Design & Development graduate students (and Pete!) The game follows a guitar playing character named Felix who is looking to make it big as a guitarist. He begins his travels to the city of Rocktropolis on foot, gaining experience and inspiration on the way. Your job is to help him play, by playing along with the notes on the screen, similar to Guitar Hero. In fact, this game even supports the Guitar Hero controller, plugged into the computer via a PS2 to USB adapter, although the keyboard works as well.

The game was developed in C++ (with DirectX) and XNA in parallel. The XNA version runs on both Windows and on the Xbox 360. Rocktropolis was a student project for the 2D Graphics Programming class. It was created over 10 weeks from the ground up, and contains all original art and music. A specially designed world builder tool was created to aid in the level design. This tool was written in Macromedia Director MX 2004, utilizing its 3D capabilities.

Download Rocktropolis!

Before there was Mega Monkey Mayhem (see the 3D student work section for more information), there was Super Iso Bomber - an adaption of Bomberman to an isometric scrolling environment.

A side-scrolling in the classic sense of the genre, this was a recent project in 2D graphics programming. Kudos to all the folks that pulled it off, it not only ran great it was fun and took some skill to play! Good job to team "Classic Gamers".

To the right is another screenie of Orpheus' Revenge, showing a bit more of the 'platformer' aspect. Its really quite tricky to get your double-jump to let you up on some of those platforms.

Software Engineering has an ample presence in the Games Concentration. Hovertanks! was a project that one of the SE teams did in a recent 2D graphics class - they implemented their engine on top of the managed DX9 framework using C# - the first group to do so. Nice job SE crew!

To the right is a shot of the hovertanks game in progress. There are gradually more and more enemies on the screen, so what seems fairly simple here becomes a nightmare of shooting and dying. Very interesting beam weapons and enemy targeting procedures though.

Tortoise control is a 2d side-scrolling beat 'em up. Tortoise Control is the tale of a tortoise trying to find himself. His life is changed one day when the village elder reveals a bit of Taj’s past. Taj is from a special race of tortoises that are destined with protecting the world. However, Taj is the only one left, and must fight through time and space to attain the relics that have been stolen from his people, and save our world.

Invade the Earth and conquer the human race - Orbs: Project Null engages you in fast-paced classic 2D action! Shoot down Earth’s defenders with multiple weapon types, or simply wreak havoc using melee attacks. Move your character through a scrolling world, aim and shoot at enemies using the mouse, and collect energy to replenish your ammunition. Created by team Sonic Death Monkey, this game was inspired by many different elements of classic 2D scrolling shooter games.

Authors:
Eric Baker, Mike Dapiran, Mike DeMauro, Matt Jacobs, Adam Nabinger, Karl Orosz

Game Description: Cell is a forced scrolling top-down shooting game. The player controls a specially engineered virus and enters the blood stream of an infected organism. The objective is to eradicate the hostile bacteria and viruses invading the host. The player has use of an innovative tail weapon which can be used to capture and control enemies.

You can download and play Cell here.

Authors: Nick Blake, Justin Forrest, Brian May, Steve Staurovsky, Jimmy Van Sise

Militaristic alien marine creatures develop space flight technology and launch a massive assault on earth using huge bubbles of water to transport their forces. Earth has been hit by several attacks already, prompting action from the Cross Home-world Alien Obliteration Squad (CHAOS). They have sent their best operative, piloting a prototype bathysphere space suit to deal a direct blow to the coordinating leader of the assault on Earth.

You play as this operative, moving from space-bubble to space-bubble in order to find the coordinator of the attack. If you can kill him then the attack will fail and the Earth will be saved.

The game plays from a top-down perspective, allowing you to move in any direction with the keyboard, firing weapons mounted on your bathysphere using the mouse to defeat your enemies. If you can defeat enough enemies to fill your blood meter, you will summon the general of this aquatic, cybernetic army -- THE BATTLE WHALE. Defeat the whale to achieve victory!

All graphics, sound and coding were developed inside the team in ten weeks. You can download and play the game here.

Invasion is a 2D space-based shooter created in 11ish weeks by Team Planar, consisting of Kristian Bauer, Harmon Keener, Juan Obes, and Robert Smith. Invasion is loosely based on Geometry Wars, with several additions to make the gameplay more interesting.

In addition to the standard alien-killing goodness one expects from this genre, Invasion features 4 types of upgradeable weapons, 4 types of bombs, a centralized high score server, networked multiplayer, and rich graphics and sound. Team Planar has spent many hours not only creating Invasion, but tweaking every aspect of it to make the game fun and continuously challenging for players of all skill levels.

For questions or comments, please shoot us an email at planar.invasion [at] gmail.com

Downloads:
You can see a video of Invasion on YouTube here, and you can install and play Invasion here.

A Snail’s Pace is a cross pollination of the shooter and platformer genres. It centers around a snail named Helix who has acquired a jetpack and a gun, and he decides to kill garden variety enemies(pun intended) and oppressive bosses. The game will combine platformer elements – running and jumping to avoid enemies – and shooter elements. The controls will use an intuitive mouse/keyboard interface that the user will employ to make Helix “fly”, walk, and kill enemies.

Download it here! Requires XNA 2.0

Developed By:

Joe Andrusyszyn - joseph.andrusyszyn -at - gmail.com
Patrick Dobson - pjd6457 -at- rit.edu
Josh Gruenberg - jrg0805 -at- rit.edu
John Reese - jreese -at- leetcode.net
Brian Schroth - bcs5888 -at- rit.edu

Impulse is a puzzle game with an emphasis on magnetic and explosive forces. The player takes command of a ball and uses direct and indirect means of control to navigate around the environments. Throughout the levels, the player will encounter explosions, black holes, and magnetic platforms that have been combined to create an entertaining experience.

The team:
Andrew Williams
Mike Thomas
Dominic Holt
Paul Solt
Joseph Plourde
Andy Ray
Ben Solt

You can download and play Impulse here.